Medium Access Control for Wireless Networks with Peer-to-Peer State Exchange

TL;DR

This paper introduces distributed MAC protocols for wireless networks that enable stations to exchange state information, adapt transmission parameters, and achieve collision-free scheduling similar to TDMA through local interactions.

Contribution

It presents novel distributed MAC protocols utilizing peer-to-peer state exchange to dynamically form collision-free schedules in wireless networks.

Findings

Protocols converge to steady state with collision-free scheduling.

Stations adapt packet length and state space based on local traffic.

Effective in static or slowly changing network topologies.

Abstract

Distributed medium access control (MAC) protocols are proposed for wireless networks assuming that one-hop peers can periodically exchange a small amount of state information. Each station maintains a state and makes state transitions and transmission decisions based on its state and recent state information collected from its one-hop peers. A station can adapt its packet length and the size of its state space to the amount of traffic in its neighborhood. It is shown that these protocols converge to a steady state, where stations take turns to transmit in each neighborhood without collision. In other words, an efficient time-division multiple access (TDMA) like schedule is formed in a distributed manner, as long as the topology of the network remains static or changes slowly with respect to the execution of the protocol.